In recent years, various electronic products are introduced to the market constantly, and both function and quality of these products are developed rapidly to break through our purchasing habit. For example, a cathode ray tube (CRT) television comes with a large size and higher power consumption, and the CRT televisions cannot satisfy user requirements for easy carry, small installation space, and convenient transportation, and thus the CRT televisions are replaced gradually by flat panel televisions, particularly by liquid crystal display (LCD) televisions. Since the flat panel televisions feature lower power consumption, a low radiation, lighter weight, and a small volume occupying not much space, therefore the flat panel televisions become very popular and welcome by most consumers. The demand and market share of the LCD televisions grow unceasingly, and the cost of LCD panels drops continuously, and thus the LCD televisions gradually replace the traditional CRT televisions and become a mainstream of home video products.
As the manufacturing technologies of LCD television constantly have breakthrough, the original luxury LCD televisions have become one of the low-priced and high-performance electric appliances. Particularly, the selling price of LCD television keeps on dropping, and thus the -LCD televisions attract more and more attentions in the market, and now become the most popular digital home appliance. Since the sales volume of the large-size LCD televisions gradually rises, the problems for the package and transportation of the large size LCD televisions gradually emerge and become an important issue for manufacturers, sellers and consumers.
In general, an LCD television comprises a display panel and a base. When the LCD television is packed, a conventional package method is used to pack the whole assembly of the display panel and base into a carton before exiting factory or shipping to customers. However, the conventional package method results in a large volume of the carton, not only incurring a higher material cost of the carton, but also reducing the capacity of a single container for shipping the LCD televisions, and this conventional method further increases the transportation cost. Therefore, some manufacturers pack the display panel and the base separately, in hope of overcoming the foregoing shortcomings. Although such arrangement can reduce the volume of each carton, however the package cost is increased and the package time is extended. Furthermore, consumers need to spend more time to attach the base onto the display panel and the base after they purchase the LCD television, and thus greatly reducing the consumer's willingness of purchasing such product.
To improve the aforementioned two packing methods, some manufacturers developed a carton structure capable of simultaneously packing the display panel and the base as disclosed in R.O.C. Pat. No. M284649 entitled “Carton structure for liquid crystal display devices”. In FIG. 1, the structure includes an external box 10, a lower buffer 11, a lateral buffer 12 and an upper buffer 13, wherein the lower buffer 11 is disposed at the bottom in the external box 10, and the bottom of the display panel 20 is wrapped in the lower buffer 11, and the upper buffer 13 is provided for wrapping the top of the display panel 20. After the external box 10 is closed, the upper buffer 13 is contained in the top of the external box 10, and the lateral buffer 12 is placed between the lower buffer 11 and the upper buffer 13 for wrapping the lateral sides of the display panel 20, and the base 22 is placed between the lateral buffer 12 and the upper buffer 13 by a latch groove 130 disposed on the upper buffer 13.
Although the foregoing carton structure can reduce the volume of the carton, such structure cannot effectively overcome the shortcomings of the conventional package methods, but it still causes problems. For instance, the display panel 20 cannot be erected on a tabletop after the display panel 20 is removed from carton, because the base 22 has not been installed on to the bottom of the display panel 20, and thus consumers may have difficulties to place the display panel 20. If the display panel 20 is not placed properly, the display panel 20 may be scraped or damaged. Furthermore, consumers usually lie the display panel 20 horizontally on a desktop or a floor, such that when consumers want to attach the base 22 onto the bottom of the display panel 20, consumers may damage the display panel 20 or the base 22, since it is difficult to apply forces when both display panel 20 and base 22 are set at poor disposing positions. As a result, unnecessary disputes between consumers and manufacturers may arise.
In addition, the foregoing carton structure uses too many large buffers 11, 12, 13, and these buffers 11, 12, 13 are usually made of a styrofoam, corrugated paper or foam material. Such arrangement not only increases the material cost, but also fails to meet the environmental protection requirement of consuming less packing materials. Therefore, it is an important issue for manufacturers to overcome the shortcomings of the prior art.